Where Is Everybody?
by The Neliel Tu
Summary: Neliel and Nnoitra. Nothing much, just a recap of their days before Espada-dom. Slightly OC, maybe more IC than usual. Maybe? Song-ish-fic, but very in-depth, as per usual. Please read it.


_(A/N: Neliel and Nnoitra. Well, I tried to keep them in character, but they both seem ever so slightly out of whack. It's hard to say how they were before becoming espada, and what happened, but I do like to make things up, and create, but still…I don't know. I'm playing both sides in my stories, having Neliel wanting the power, seeking it, and wanting to become Espada, but also on the other hand, not wishing for it. Though, that happens in another fic._

_Ah, anyway, I hope it's as good as I think it is, though maybe, just maybe, it starts off a bit slow. This is a Nine Inch Nails song, from the CD The Fragile, HaloFourteen. Yeah, I got myself a Halloween present. Enjoy.)_

_**Where Is Everybody?**_

did you happen to catch  
or did it happen so fast  
what you thought would always last  
has passed you by  
is everything speeding up  
or am I slowing down  
just spinning around  
and I don't know why  
all the pieces don't fit  
thought I really didn't give a shit  
I never wanted to be like you  
but for all I aspire  
I am really a liar  
and I'm running out of things I can do

His lone eye held a glare that Neliel did not mistake as anyone else's. She took her power for granted, it was a given, something that would always be there, something that she would always be able to fall back on. She would always have it.

She thought it would always last.

Nnoitra felt differently. Was time just slowing down for him? Or was everything happening so fast? Neliel's ascent to espada and to everything that she had achieved before he could even get a single finger inside the door. Was he the one slowing down, or was she just speeding up?

Nothing really fit. Neliel was a woman, weak-willed and submissive. Neliel was not like a woman, and more and more like what Nnoitra aspired to be.

He never wanted to become like Neliel. He did not want that for himself. His aspirations were the same as hers, and thus, he would have to become like her.

He was a liar. Telling himself that he did not want to be like Neliel when all he aspired to do was to become just like her was the biggest lie he had ever told. He was running out of things he could do, and ways he could prove his strength.

Was he slowing down? Spinning, aimlessly, in a whirlpool of sameness, lost hopes and causes, while Neliel ascended to an exalted status among men who were worthier.

Nnoitra was worthier.

He never wanted to be like Neliel, but Neliel was the archetype for what he struggled to become.

I'd like to stay  
but every day  
everything pushes me further away  
if you could show  
help me to know  
how it's supposed to be  
where did it go?

She wanted to stay in the desert.

Alone, with Nnoitra, her thoughts could be heard louder than before, louder than anywhere else she had ever tried, and with him, she felt whole. Nothing else, and this was a fact that Neliel knew all too well, could fill the void that she knew existed within her.

The void was natural. She was, essentially, beneath everything that she strived to become, a hollow. It was a fact she constantly threw back into her face, simply to remind herself that she was an inferior being, and that she did indeed need to work to become a superior being.

She wanted to stay.

The days grew harder, with everything pushing her away, Nnoitra's growing bitterness, his stinging tone, her own power urging her to pursue her rank as tricero, laid out before her and waiting, calling to her. She was promised that she could hold that rank. It was waiting for her, and she was ready to take it.

Nnoitra could not show her what she could do to stay. What was supposed to happen? How were they supposed to be?

She could never feel whole again, but the power was something she hoped to substitute for that feeling of wholeness.

She walked through the desert, feeling thoroughly lonely and with no one to turn to but the looming image of Las Noches in the distance. Where did her sense of faithfulness go?

_  
pleading and  
needing and  
bleeding and  
breeding and  
feeding  
exceeding  
where is everybody?  
_

His hands rested upon the sand, his knees supporting much of his weight as he looked up to her. Neliel, her blade poised to kill him.

"Please…" his eye fell to the blood darkened sand. "Don't kill me."

It was absurd. Pleading for his life, Nnoitra? He needed to get into Las Noches. Neliel stood in his way. She was his beacon of hope.

"This is the only chance you will ever have. If you do not let me kill you now—I will not kill you." She narrowed golden eyes, tainted with purity.

He fed upon her strength to raise himself up to face her down. Thoughts bred in his mind, he needed to exceed her propensity toward strength. It felt impossible to breed that strength with his own, but he knew that he could become espada, the coveted rank among arrancar.

"Where is everybody?" he looked around, seeing only Neliel.

"It's no matter." She turned her head. "There is nothing to worry about. If you must make it through these solid doors, then I must follow you."

"Why the hell?"

"It is my duty to protect those who are weaker than I, to preserve the ranks of what could be a great army. Do you not find this a worthy cause?"

He could say nothing, only remain silent.

_trying and lying  
defying denying  
crying and dying  
where is everybody?_

She watched him try. She lied to him, told him that he had not grown stronger when he had.

She watched his defiance toward her, his denial that she was indeed stronger.

The tears of many were the ones that he never shed; the death that he asked for was one that he would not achieve through her blade; besides the fact that it was what he felt he wanted. He would have to cry for her, bleed for her, deny her, defy her, but where was everybody else?

She would not deliver that finishing blow. No, it was impossible for her to do such a thing to a weaker being. Were he of equal footing, or of a greater strength, then perhaps it would be a notion to consider.

Where was everybody else? Certainly there was another who would capitalize on Nnoitra's wish for death.

_  
well okay, enough,  
you've had your fun  
but come on there has to be someone  
that hasn't yet become  
so numb and succumb  
and god damn I am so tired of pretending  
of wishing I was ending  
when all I'm really doing is trying to hide  
and keep it inside  
and fill it with lies  
open my eyes?  
maybe I wish I could try_

It was enough. Neliel had had enough fun with her status, enough fun with pushing him around, enough of every little abuse she had put him through. _Nnoitra_ had had enough.

There had to be someone, oh god, _someone_ who had not yet succumb to the numbness of the position of Espada, the holy blade, the chosen one.

Why the hell hadn't Neliel been that _someone?_ She had her fun, yet she performed with such fluent ease and general indifference that he knew, he just _knew _that she was the same, not different like he.

God damn, was he ever tired of pretending! He wished for death, yes, yes, but why? He did not want to end unless he was bathed in blood, the most powerful of all, put to an end because he was a threat to society in general.

What was he trying to hide, anyway? Feelings that should never surface? The lies that he could do nothing about? He wanted to kill, not to be killed! He had to hide it through pretensions of strength and willingness, nay, his disposition for death!

That way, the only way, he could fill it with lies, and keep it inside, where it would be safe from prying eyes, and voyeurs who only sought to destroy him. Neliel being the main one.

Could he ever open his eye to the truth?

"Maybe…" Nnoitra glared at Neliel, whose lids hung precariously over half exposed golden eyes.

"Maybe what?" she asked offhandedly, her toe making a trail through the sand that leaked in through the open door.

"Maybe I wish I could try…try to become something else."

Neliel turned from him, her finger pointing a path down the hallway for him to follow.

The implication was clear, and Nnoitra brushed the subject aside, deciding instead to follow his dream of becoming Espada, something great, and trumping his dream of remaining steady at Neliel's side.

Someday, he would be the end of her, if ever he could crush those thoughts of a perfection that once, they had shared, and once, they had dared hope to keep.

-End


End file.
